I think this is a book about storytelling rather than simply war stories. The metaphor becomes more real than the facts. The stories are dramatic and tend reconcile the thematic content with the harsh factual realities of war. Much like his guilt,...

Tim is examining his own motivations for running away to Canada, avoiding the war, or going to war in Vietnam. Tim says either choice was not good, it was an agonizing moral dilemma, "I feared the war, yes, but I also feared exile."